The Russians say they control the strategically located city of Lysychansk and with it the entire province of Lugansk. "The occupiers are gaining a foothold," Governor Serhi Hajdaj said on Telegram this morning. Russia's defense minister told President Putin that the Russian army had "liberated" all of Lugansk with the capture of the latter city. An adviser to the Ukrainian defense minister tells Reuters news agency that he cannot confirm that Ukrainian soldiers have left Lysychansk and that the city is now in Russian hands.
The capture of Lysychansk would be a boost for the Russians, although it is a city about the size of the city of 83.45 kmē. "Lysychansk, like Sievierodonetsk, is primarily of symbolic value," says former Commander of the Royal Dutch Army Mart de Kruif. "You notice very well that Ukrainians do not want to fight themselves to death for these two cities." The American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assumes that Ukrainian troops probably "intentionally withdrew" from Lysychansk, after which the Russians were able to take the city. De Kruif says that the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in Donetsk province are particularly important, and that the Ukrainians gained time with the fighting in Lysychansk. "A delaying battle, therefore, for the Russians who are going to come." Indeed, those two other cities form a crossroads of roads and railroads between Kharkov and Donetsk, and they are also larger. "Because of the terrain with a lot of rivers and waterways, these cities are well defendable. But the question is whether the Ukrainians will be able to take out artillery and missiles at long range."
"Around Kharkov, little is happening on the ground; there is a military standstill there," says De Kruif. "And around Kherson, Ukrainian troops are advancing very slowly, there their sabotage activities are increasing." On Saturday evening, President Zelensky said that the Russians have now occupied 2,600 sites, and that the Ukrainian army has liberated over 1,000.
The price Russia must pay for victory in Lysychansk is high. American historian Philips O'Brien of the University of St Andrews in Scotland points out on social media that it took Russia nearly two and a half months to conquer an area the size of the London region, with Russia suffering "heavy losses.
https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/...727jPmsOTFWRXw " Lack of discipline, outdated weapons, problems in bringing in recruits and the many changes of guard (enforced by Putin) within the army leadership are said to have led to victory being achieved only after 77 days. The battle for the Donbas is already "one of the longest lasting battles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries," according to O'Brien. It remains to be seen whether the Russians can hold their conquered territory. The Ukrainian army is fighting back fiercely and new, heavier weapons are expected from Western allies in the near future. A Ukrainian army spokesman showed wariness on Sunday, citing those supplies. According to him, "the game in the Donbas was far from over." "For Ukrainians, life is the top priority. So sometimes we withdraw from certain areas, only to retake them later.
Update: The last Ukrainian troops from the eastern city of Lysychansk have left there, the Ukrainian military says. According to the army leadership, continuing to defend the city would have "fatal consequences." "In order to spare the lives of Ukrainian troops, we have decided to withdraw," the army leadership reported in a statement.